A discussion on Stefan Eich’s new book, The Currency of Politics: The Political Theory of Money from Aristotle to Keynes.

Comments by: Sanjay Reddy and Emma Park

What is money? How does it work? How can and should money be a part of the political process? Despite its centrality to contemporary politics and economic rule, we struggle to articulate money’s democratic possibilities and limits. The Currency of Politics takes readers from ancient Greece to the 1970s, to provide a new intellectual history of monetary politics, drawing on the insights of key political philosophers to reveal a layered history of money as not just a medium of exchange but also a contested institution of political rule. The book recovers the neglected political theories of money in the thought of such figures as Aristotle, John Locke, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes. In reconstructing foundational ideas at the intersection of monetary rule and democratic politics, The Currency of Politics insists that only through greater awareness of the historical limits of monetary politics can we begin to articulate more democratic conceptions of money.

Panel

Stefan Eich is Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University and the Richard B. Fisher Member in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS).

Sanjay G. Reddy is Associate Professor and Chair of Economics at The New School for Social Research, and an Affiliated Faculty Member of the Politics Department. 

Emma Park is Assistant Professor of History at the New School for Social Research and the Eugene Lang College. 

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